Wednesday, April 30, 2014

Not much to tell from my side. The journey from Mag. to PhD is a very intense one, a rocky road, a bumby ride, other appropriate idioms... but it's not the kind of intensity that's fun to share on the blog. At least not right now. Right now you'd be bored out of your minds if I told you what I'm up to every day! Therefore the silence on here. However, today something noteworthy happened: mail. Don't get me wrong, I'm lucky enough to have friends and family so awesome and great, that I've been receiving various holiday cards and birthday cards and even cool postcards regularly, from all kinds of places. And then there's the e-mail and the Skype messages and the Facebook messages and so on and so forth... but today was different. Today I got a package.And not just any package, either! I didn't order anything online, I didn't get a delivery of something I bought that had to come in from a central warehouse... No. I got a package from my mom.Also, I have to be honest here. I'm very emotional right now so I'm not going to hold back. I got a package from my mommy. Yes, that's right. I am a grown-up (sort of), I have been living alone all over the place for years, I work and I study and I earn money and I pay bills. But I call her my mommy. I also call my dad daddy. Problem? Of course not, you do the same!

Back to the package now! It's the best package ever, with the best stuff ever inside! Not just because it's the first one I've ever gotten while really, really living far away (not temporarily, but with my own address and everything), but because my mommy knows exactly what I like and she sent me just that.

Tightly sealed to make sure everything arrives intact!

Dear Customs, thank you for making sure all's safe and legal in my mail. But if I find out you took any of my stuff, uh-oh..

Now, here's what I got:

That's what I call a care package!!!

I had asked for a few of these things: the Sonnentor Good Mood tea (the one with the flowers in it) and the tea maker thingie (no idea what it's called, but it's fabulous) and the bread, because you just can't get proper bread here in Trinidad and it's one of the things I truly miss. I don't miss many things, but of those few things bread might be the top one. Then there were some things I hadn't asked for, that came as a total surprise: the Sonnentor Easter Surprise tea and the Sonnentor All Is Well tea (that one's for when you have a flu or a cold, perfect) and the MAOAM (among my favourite candy) and the Smarties (for the kid in me) and the bread (yes, I'd asked for it, but I didn't know I'd get that much - and such variety: there's whole grain with walnuts and there's organic whole grain rye with sunflower seeds and with spelt and with green spelt and with linseed... it's amazing... oh my!). Perfect surprise! And, yes, of course there was a card in it. My mommy doesn't send stuff without sending words along with it. But I'm not showing you my card, that's personal. Why am I sharing this at all? Well, it's part of the journey. And it's part of being far away from your family, which is something we travelers (and expats) live with. And it's part of how sometimes in the midst of all the difficulties and problems something so positive happens, even if it's small, that you're on top of the world. Even if it's just while you're drinking a cup of organic Austrian herbal tea with flowers in it... I've got a lot of stuff going on so I'm going to get back to work now. Danke, Mami. HDL.

Tuesday, April 8, 2014

Finally came to terms with all the things I still have to do this semester before I can get back to two things: my own research and LIFE (which leads to finally getting back to blogging as well). It took long enough, but I made a plan (there's a timeline and everything, I made a calendar of it's own only for this) of how I'm going to get everything done. Now, after a lot of struggling and planning, I'm finally comfortable and hopeful that not only can it be done, I'll even do a good job.

Things are lined up and make sense now.

Things are not scary anymore.

And then:

Colleague tells me lecturer announced hat the current assignment is not the final assignment. There is another one coming after this, due in May and 6,000 words long.

Colleague says it wasn't a mistake, there really is another assignment.

Colleague shows me course outline and it's true, it's right there. Lecturer had just put so much emphasis on current project that every single one of us assumed it was the final one, the big one, and that there was nothing after it. But it's right there, come to kick us in the butts now that we thought we're all almost done with the course.

But nothing can be done about it. We have to write this very long final essay as well.

Back to zero. Make a new plan. Restructure the coming month. More work again.

Why am I wasting time making a gif-filled blog post about how I have too many assignments and I really don't want to because I need a break and I want to sleep? I'm not. This is therapeutic. I already feel better after all this whining. Bye now, I'm off to work.